weasel wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 2:59 pm
You can't simply terminate contracts because a player gets injured and hardly like a player is going to decide to terminate early as it isn't like they could then sign for another club and play given that they are still injured. It is the same risk with every signing really, 1 bad injury and and it can lead to other injuries. Forshaw isn't like JKA in that he doesn't want to play and is happy just picking up a wage.
Who are we to say whether Forshaw could be good enough for Bielsa in the premiership. Cooper, Dallas, Harrison and many others were seen as low end championship players just a couple of seasons ago by most of us fans. Forshaw's last few games for Leeds he was playing really well in a role none of us would have envisaged him in, the only thing lacking was an end product but who knows whether that would have improved in time - Ayling's end product was shocking prior to Bielsa but now there isn't a right back in the league I would rather have.
Yes I would agree that we certainly would be unwise to count on Forshaw in our squad but equally no point writing him off if Bielsa hasn't.
After 2 years out its practically unheard of for a player to come back and play at a higher level than before.
Have to say ive never really rated him in truth aside from the first few months.
To me he was a slightly better Eunan O'Kane, very little substance to his game.
I have no ill will towards him but i do feel people overrate him, we did better without him then we ever did with him.
1964white wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:37 am
Those figures included cup games
My figures were based on league appearances which gives a true reflection how many games Forshaw actually missed.
However that reflection doesn't mean he was injured, he may have been, but that the manager didn't select him. Just look at MU they paid £35m for Donny van de Beek yet despite him not being injured the manager rarely picked him.
Unless he secures a season long loan elsewhere its pretty obvious he is going to see out his contract with us and become a free agent next summer.
A real shame, he's not the greatest but would have been adequate cover for Kalvin before Struijk / Koch stepped into the role.
The flowers of common sense do not grow in everyone's garden
I spotted him in one of latest videos showing the lads going through those medical tests.
So he is Back.
Question is now, can Bielsa break him in pre season training?
' "Football is about the people and the players,” he said. “Then there are those who will mingle in the middle: the coaches, executives and journalists. That last group represents the worst part about football" Marcelo Bielsa
1964white wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:33 pmAdam Forshaw vs. Crewe:
93.5% pass accuracy
61 minutes played
43 touches
29/31 successful passes
14 opposition half passes
4 ball recoveries
2 chances created
2/2 successful long passes
2 duels won
2/2 tackles won
1 shot on-target
Solid return on his first competitive start since 2019.
Screenshot 2021-08-25 17.32.56.png
He looked to shirk an early tackle but he certainly made up for it by some full blown challenges. His passing looked decent and he almost grabbed a goal.
I hope he goes on to have a great season.
' "Football is about the people and the players,” he said. “Then there are those who will mingle in the middle: the coaches, executives and journalists. That last group represents the worst part about football" Marcelo Bielsa
Been thinking about him a bit since listening to this weeks Phil Hay and reading the Athletic Article which I will post here.
So long since he has been away, his last game was the away game to Charlton that is famous for the Casilla/ Leko incident.
Forshaw came off the bench and almost stole an equalizer late on when his attempt was blocked in a goal mouth scramble.
It got me trying to remember what his play brought to the team under BielsaI remember a quasi defensive box to box type who used to find loads of room in the box and all that seemed to me missing from the offensive side of his game was a finish, like some others at that time -- Harrison springs to mind-- he had an affinity with either smacking it straight at the keeper or finding the woodwork.
Defensively he could play the KP role but obviously he wasn't as effective and he took a bit of flak as a result.
However, remember Bamford of that period, not many here envisioned his return to the Prem being a success, also at the time of the season when Forshaw got injured we had reservations over Ayling and Dallas as well.
Perhaps a fit Forshaw will allow us a settled defensive unit this season as there may be no need to shuffle the pack as much during the inevitable absences of KP.
Adam Forshaw’s 697 days of agony and why he can finally now look forward to his Premier League dream
Adam Forshaw
By Phil Hay Aug 25, 2021 51
Adam Forshaw is the player at Leeds United who runs the morning quiz in the medical room. His team-mates lie on the loungers, receiving treatment before training, and Forshaw keeps them occupied by testing their football knowledge.
The squad like the distraction, and everyone likes Forshaw, but there is only so long a non-playing footballer can serve as the entertainment. David Prutton once recalled how his decision to leave Leeds was rubber-stamped by the club’s stadium announcer asking him to take to the pitch at half-time during a League One match. He was struggling to get a game or even make the squad, so why not entertain the crowd?
‘f**k me,’ Prutton thought to himself. Is this what it’s come to? Acting like a jester? He refused to do it and a few weeks later, joined Colchester United and said goodbye. Better that than outstaying your welcome.
Forshaw’s circumstances are different to Prutton’s back then. Prutton was a victim of the pecking order, a footballer Leeds no longer needed. Forshaw is the player who shone most brightly during Marcelo Bielsa’s first pre-season; a cog Bielsa would still like in his machine. A broken foot that summer, suffered innocuously in training, was merely a precursor to what came next.
The last time anyone saw Forshaw kick a ball in anger, Leeds were still the best part of a year from promotion from the Championship.
But last night, at home to third division Crewe Alexandra in the Carabao Cup, the light at the end of the tunnel met him; a run of 21 months without a first-team appearance ending with a game unlike anything he expected. It was always likely that Forshaw would play against Crewe, a less consequential fixture than any Leeds are contesting in the Premier League and a gentle starter, but starvation caused by 18 months without crowds meant Elland Road was rammed to capacity for it.
The timeline of his most debilitating injury is a grim one, running back to a game against Derby County, which he missed in September 2019. Forshaw would be back the next week, Bielsa predicted, and Forshaw was, for a 1-0 defeat at Charlton Athletic. That bone in his foot had long since healed and the only consequence of it was the quality of Bielsa’s midfield in his absence, particularly Mateusz Klich, meant Forshaw could not find a quick way back in. But in the days after that trip to Charlton the longer road began, much as no one at Elland Road expected him to be missing for any severe length of time.
As weeks turned into months, it became a personal mission for the club’s medical staff to get him through the other side of almost two years of torment.
Forshaw in action before his injuries (Photo: Tim Goode/PA Images via Getty Images)
The discomfort Forshaw suffered from was caused by bones in his groin/hip area rubbing together. It was unsurprisingly painful, sometimes in a way that was almost manageable but often to an extent that made it impossible for him to train fully. Leeds resisted surgery for a while because that would mean a long absence and something about the injury made the club optimistic that physio work might see it off. Bielsa was quoted repeatedly as saying Forshaw was not too far away. Everyone believed it, Forshaw included. But at no stage was he ever right.
As the delay went on, Leeds accepted the need for more serious treatment. Forshaw underwent major surgery at the Steadman Clinic in Colorado, USA — a renowned facility which had treated other footballers, including Michael Owen and Owen Hargreaves, as well as a host of top American sports figures. He went to specialists in Ireland and elsewhere. He had teeth removed in the hope that losing them might aid his skeletal structure (Leeds had invested in dentistry treatment after Bielsa’s arrival, primarily because of the link between the health of one’s teeth and the health of the rest of the body). That trip to the Steadman Clinic took place early last year and ultimately worked but muscles which had gone without competitive football for months took longer to reacclimatise, susceptible to niggles and minor setbacks.
Last season, during a Premier League campaign in which Forshaw did not feature at all, he was used in an under-23s fixture for the first time, a friendly against York City. He then pulled a hamstring and, with the end of the season approaching, Leeds decided to leave him be until they reconvened to begin training for 2021-22. It might have been possible to get him fit for the final first-team match against West Bromwich Albion — a dead rubber and a farewell to Pablo Hernandez, Gaetano Berardi and Gjanni Alioski — but after almost two years out, what were another couple of months? A healthy summer saw to it that Forshaw made the bench for the first game of this season 10 days ago, away at Manchester United.
The mental impact of his slow recovery is easy enough to imagine. Forshaw, now 30, made his professional debut for Everton as an 18-year-old and has been in a first-team environment for longer than he can remember. He featured in the second series of Amazon Prime’s Take Us Home documentary, watching on television at home as Bielsa and Leeds tried to wrap up Premier League promotion. After a friendly at Guiseley last month, Forshaw was pictured sharing a moment with his young son beside the pitch. “My son won’t remember watching me before my two years of hell,” Forshaw wrote on Instagram. Which is how it must have been.
The irony of being an injured footballer is that no one spends more time at the training ground than them. But, over time, they become increasingly anonymous, invisible and forgotten, at least to the public.
Bielsa likes to talk Forshaw up. He has been heard in private to say that he thinks Forshaw, in top form and full fitness, would do a job for a Champions League club’s midfield and remarked last week that he possesses quality “we couldn’t buy in the market at this moment”. But for so long there was no point in making comments like that, not in the absence of any firm predictions about when Forshaw would actually play.
Whenever you asked about him, Erik Lamela’s name was sometimes referenced. Lamela, then at Tottenham Hotspur, required hip surgery in 2017 and was out for more than a year. His absence was shorter than Forshaw’s but nonetheless, his experience proved that hip problems can take time to recover from and that a long period of rehabilitation need not be an obstacle to a comeback.
Forshaw got there last night, grinning and walking on air as he came out for the warm-up. Sixty minutes against Crewe was a small step and a huge step, both in the right direction.
Between this appearance and his last? Six hundred and ninety-seven days. The ultimate medical room tie-breaker.
(Top photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
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' "Football is about the people and the players,” he said. “Then there are those who will mingle in the middle: the coaches, executives and journalists. That last group represents the worst part about football" Marcelo Bielsa
Cjay wrote: ↑Sun Sep 12, 2021 7:27 pm
Hadn't actually noticed but he wasn't on the bench today.
Has a muscular injury.
How did he get injured?
They should have oiled the hinges on the door to the medical room, that's put way too much strain on his musculoskeletal system when he tried to get out of there.
